Please help me decode this article about gTLDs.
I like reading opinions that are opposite mine. They help me either reinforce my opinions or consider the other side of the story. So when I came across an opinion piece by Naseem Javed this morning in E-Commerce Times that was in favor of new top level domains from ICANN, I eagerly started reading it.
I quickly became lost as I tried to decode Javed’s marketing speak and sentences that make little sense to me. I like to think I’m an intelligent guy, but I just feel stupid after reading this article. Can you help me decode it? Here are some of Javed’s points:
It offers the fastest and cheapest mechanism to create a new layer of cyber-brand with global visibility. It also comes with protection — upon approval the applicant will exclusively acquire a one-of-a-kind intellectual asset of a cyber name identity and play on global e-commerce. Based on rules of trademarking, the name identity will not be confused with someone else’s name brand and equally will be protected from any one else using that name brand. The application process under trademark rules, will not grant confusingly similar suffixes “bank” or “banking” and the same suffix will be 100 percent owned and controlled by its owner, eliminating cyber-squatting by others. What ICANN is doing is like creating a wheel, while businesses will have to think in terms of bicycles and cars.
Huh? Is he suggesting that new top level domains will be immune from global and country trademarks? Is he suggesting that all businesses should pay $185,000 to create their own top level domain? And what’s this about being “100 percent owned and controlled by its owner”? Even though new TLD contracts have presumed renewal clauses, they are in no way owned by the registry.
Based on study by ABC Namebank, there will be some 100,000 business names worldwide that will have to respond, by evaluating, modifying and applying to create new interactions, they will need all this re-branding to further energize new cyber-branding platforms.
In English, please? “Create new interactions”? “Energize new cyber-branding platforms”?
The new tool offers a clear savings of 95 percent of the time and 95 percent of traditional advertising cost to create a global cyber presence.
All that’s “clear” to me is I’m confused.
Embracing global naming and language realities ICANN further softens the issues and create open harmony among nations.
That’s not a sentence, but I like harmony.
If someone wouldn’t mind reading the article and helping me understand what Javed is saying, I’d appreciate it.
Kristina Rosette says
Phew! I thought I was the only one who was baffled by his articles. My *personal opinion* is that he simply gets a lot of it wrong.
John says
The guy who wrote that article needs to go review what happened to the baseball card marketplace with overproduction of cards and any number of Stocks when all they do is issue more and more shares.
In both cases, they dilute themselves away.
Plenty of .com’s out there still available
Ron Jackson says
I know the name. He is a free lance writer who constantly sends his free articles to various media outlets with the hope that they will publish them. I get them from him all of the time, including this one, but have never published any, partly due to the reasons you noted – they frequently show a lack of understanding of the subject matter he chooses. He appears to crank out a large volume of free articles on various topics, I assume with the idea of increasing his name recognition.
Premium Generics says
Saw this same piece last night (Google Alerts is awesome for domain news) and found myself equally confused.
As far as I can tell, Andrew flushed out the author’s main points. He supports new gTLDs + he believes it will be less expensive to open and maintain a new registry than it would be to obtain trademarks in 100+ countries worldwide. He seems to miss the point that TLDs and trademarks are not synonymous.
Like Ron Jackson pointed out, this writer demonstrates a lack of understanding about the proposed new gTLD application process as well as the manner in which global marketing campaigns are carried out.
belshass says
Can someone send him an email to explain him how things will be with new gTLDs ?
or should I?
We need to http://XR.com/EDUCATE people like him !
BestS,
Ritz
David J Castello says
Naseem Javed is a one man army in favor of vanity TLDs. I have answered him directly in the past, strongly disagreeing with his position.
Naseem is highly idealistic to the point of being unrealistic. For one thing, he constantly confuses the importance of trademarking versus branding. The foundation of his argument is that if someone like Jonna Plastics owns dotJonna then all of their TLD trademark worries are over because they will have a monopoly on the word Jonna. Yes, they would – but only as a TLD. They would probably not own Jonna.com, Jonna.ca, etc, but in Naseem’s mind that is perfectly OK.
Wrong.
The real marketing power on Internet is branding and he simply doesn’t get it. The owners of Jonna Plastics would spend a fortune trying to get the world to remember to put Jonna to the right side of the dot (not mention plunking down 200K to obtain the TLD). Do the TLD’s dotAero, dotTravel and dotPro mean anything to the world? No, they don’t. And these TLDs are 1000X easier to brand than a specific vanity TLD like a dotJonna.
On another note, part of me wants people like Naseem to succeed. After the dust settles and the marketplace realizes what a nightmare it will be to brand and promote these vanity TLDs, the intrinsic value of generic and geodomain dotCom and ccTlds will spike.
Antony Van Couvering says
The author is addicted to jargonish language and a bit confused on the substance. I think the points that he making (that are worth repeating) are:
1. Having a TLD that matches your brand is great branding. For a company that spends millions on its brand annually (there are plenty of them), does it make sense for your online marketing spend to promote VeriSign (.com) or yourself (.company)?
2. There is some talk, though it’s by no means assured, that if you have a TLD, that string would then be forbidden as a second-level domain name in subsequent TLDs. For instance, if a lawyer’s group started a .law TLD, it’s possible that any registration of law.anything would be forbidden in any later TLDs. This is how it works now with ccTLDs — if you apply for a new TLD, you have to put all the two-letter CC codes on a reserve list. But as I said, this is by no means assured…
Hope that helps. Thanks for being willing to engage in this subject.
Antony
Johnny says
It is as Antony says, just “jargon”.
Also, who really uses the word “cyber” anymore? It makes it sound like this article was written in 1997.
Andrew Allemann says
E-commerce Times usually publishes good articles, so it’s a shame. I guess I ended up giving him the exposure he wanted, even if it makes him look like an idiot.
David J Castello says
Antony:
RE: “…does it make sense for your online marketing spend to promote VeriSign (.com) or yourself (.company)?”
No one needs to promote dotCom and to suggest that IBM’s IBM.com is only helping to line VeriSign’s pockets with gold is silly. DotCom is already forever stamped into the world’s consciousness with trillions of dollars in marketing and a media revolution to boot. On the other hand, no one is going to remember any of these vanity TLDs unless it’s a brand they’re already familiar with such as IBM or Microsoft. And then, why bother? They’re already covered.
Furthermore, the ccTLDs solve most of the regional TM issues. Very few brands have legitimate worldwide TM authority. The real fun begins when someone tries to lock down a generic TLD such a dotLaw or dotDiamond for their sole usage.
What we have here is a paradox that will do nothing but enrich ICANN and TM attorneys. The companies with worldwide brands are already branded and the small companies who engage in this stupidity will get lost in the mix.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Antony – this whole marketing angle is something I haven’t comprehended yet. Let’s say that IBM gets its own TLD, .ibm. What would they market it as? How would people get to their web site?
They can’t just type “IBM” into their browser. They Have to have .ibm, and potentially something before the dot. So they could maket specialties like services.ibm. But what about just branding .ibm? Where will they tell you to go?
Even assuming they decide to market “go to http://www.ibm“, I suspect 99% of people will go to http://www.ibm.com. Over time this may be reduced, but not by much.
Patrick McDermott says
“Based on study by ABC Namebank, there will be some 100,000 business names worldwide that will have to respond, by evaluating, modifying and applying to create new interactions,”
I like how he uses ABC Namebank as an authority source but then you find out it’s his company as revealed in his bio at the end of the article.
Did you know Naseem Javed:
“is recognized as a world authority on corporate image and global cyber-branding.”.
and
“…introduced the Laws of Corporate Naming in the 1980s”.
Jothan Frakes says
I have been taking a hybernation from domain name media since last Thursday but I saw this guy’s article mentioned and I am relieved to read in the comments that folks could see it at face value.
I’ll explain my basis for my opinion of his opinion, but candidly, I have a filter in my email inbox that sends anything even mentioning his name into the garbage.
Why: I wasted 150 dollars to buy Mr. Javed’s first book “Domain Wars”.
Paying this much for a book sets one’s expectations fairly high. I cannot put into words my deep disappointment with what it turned out to be.
The book contained 8 pages of the market-speak about branding followed by 245 pages which were in essence a database dump of the IANA records for each of the ccTLDs.
Branding expert… certainly. He “branded” (aka tricked) me out of 150 bucks by setting an expectation of what could be expected.
Unfortunately, the book was something someone could have put together in a cyber cafe in a few hours.
He may be a branding guru (or not), but the statistics and research claimed in most of the articles that get picked up refer back to his own research service called ABC Namebank as the source.
If you look at ABC Namebank it looks like the best website that 1995 had to offer.
Anyone who wants to debate new TLDs and their place in the world with Mr. Javed is welcome to it.
On the bigger topic of new TLDs, I’ll be at DomainFest next week and would be interested to hear different perspectives on this from within our community.
Larry says
These new gTLDs seem pretty intuitive to me. If I’m Dell, I’m gonna own .dell and use sales.dell, support.dell, or say locations.dell, laptops.dell, servers.dell etc etc. That also makes sense to me as a user, and the logic will apply to other top brands that will also do this.
For say Dell it focuses your name, you catch more traffic and this opens up many many sub-sites that become more easily navigated, increasing the namespace – instead of everything running through your main.com, you are now the vertical. As said though, very different considerations apply where generic or geo gTLDs.
jp says
The first quote kinda sounds like tech talk in broken english IHMO
Kevin Ohashi says
What a god awful piece of writing. And sorry to whoever paid $150 for anything this guy wrote. Most expensive kindling ever purchased perhaps.
@Larry: I really don’t think it’s that easy to retrain 2-3 generations of internet users. They still struggle with subdomains, folders, www. (it’s NOT required!), etc. You advertise services.ibm, they type services.ibm.com. Why not just learn to manage 1 domain properly rather than waste money on a whole new extension? Just doesn’t make sense.
Duane says
@ Andrew
I find these new gTLD’S a pretty good idea!
They would be very fortunate. Mentioning the problem of what would you put in front of the .dell or .ibm is easy to answer.
I think ICANN is just trying to make it easier for Companies to expand to different planets.
Users could then know with what location of .dell or .ibm they are communicating. There could be mars.dell or venus.dell or moon.ibm
I just find ICANN is a bit early with this opportunity. lol
Domain Offerings says
I think they should take all tld’s away except for one. It seems to me that it would be easier to combine words than to try and remember which websites with the same name but different tld’s was visited before. There are a lot of combinations of 3 or 4 word names for one tld to be sufficient for all webs.
Radman says
I really liked the way they came off